Synergies and Trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals: The Case of Spain

Abstract

The United Nations plans have marked global sustainable development for more than two decades. Most of the developed and developing countries have adopted these plans to achieve the Agenda 2030, currently formed by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The analysis of the interactions between the SDGs is a growing area in research and of interest for governments. However, studies on how positive correlations can improve deteriorated goals are scarce for countries to date. This study aims at filling this gap by finding and quantifying the synergies and trade-offs among the SDGs of Spain. During the years 2000–2019, almost 80% of the SDG targets had significant interactions, either positive (synergy) or negative (trade-off). SDG 4 (quality education), SDG 5 (gender Equality) and SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) contained the largest number of positive interactions, more than 60% in all of them. SDG 3 (good health and wellbeing) was strongly linked with indicators from SDG 4 (quality education) and also SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation). Furthermore, indicators from SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) shared a high correlation with the ones from SGD 12 (responsible consumption and production) and SDG 15 (life on land). SDG 1 (no poverty), 2 (zero hunger), 6 (clean water and sanitation), 8 (decent work and economic growth) and 11 (sustainable cities and communities) had the slowest evolution during the years 2000–2019, showing contractions in some instances. We developed a regression model to assess the influence that selected targets have had on a less evolved target (target 8.6—proportion of youth not in education, employment or training). We managed to clarify high influence from target 1.3 (unemployment compensations), target 8.4 (domestic material consumption) and target 10.5 (non-performing loans) on the dependent variable. Identifying numerical dependencies between the SDGs may help nations to develop a roadmap where targets work as cogwheel towards achieving the Agenda 2030.

Towards Understanding Interactions between Sustainable Development Goals: The Role of Climate-Well-Being Linkages. Experiences of EU Countries

“…Omitting synergies and trade-offs in the assessment and planning processes related to the achievement of individual SDGs carries the risk of sub-optimal or even unfavorable results [84]. Although there are a number of studies in this field [80,81,83,[85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103] covering different contexts, so far little attention has been paid to the links between actions taken to combat climate change and its impacts and actions to improve health and social well-being. Our research has the potential to help fill this important gap and increase our understanding of the interactions between these goals.…”

Alternatives to solve SDG trade-offs and to enforce SDG synergies: a systematic literature review

“…From an economic and social dimension, quality education allows a circular relation between industry, economic growth and the use of clean energy (de Miguel Ramos and Laurenti, 2020; Oliveira et al. , 2019; Shulla et al , 2020), and responsible production and consumption enhances this relationship (Jaramillo et al ., 2019).…”

Happiness Management: A Culture to Explore From Brand Orientation as a Sign of Responsible and Sustainable Production

“…Numerous contributions to the literature encourage SDG 12, 'responsible production and consumption' , through the efficient use of resources (De Miguel Ramos and Laurenti, 2020;Zengin et al, 2021). However, one of the original contributions of this work to the literature and management is the consideration of 'responsible production and consumption': the efficient management of material resources and the design of a management model, in which behaviours, values and social norms contribute to the wellbeing and serve as a sign of brand identity.…”